The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-10-22

nOTtnWeSt alWayS Is, lt IS never so en- chanting as in the fall, just after all the pleasure-seeking, fashion-follow- ing rabble of summer tourists have left it. October is, of all the year. the queen month here. She comes danc- ing over peak and prairie, lake, vale, and deep-tangled dell. scattering beauty and brilliancy unknown to dwellers in less favored realms. The flutter of her many colored, gauge robes is like the dazzle of celestial kaleidoscopes. Her artist fingers weave mantles of autumn's brightest tintings for the woods and sloping lake and river sides. Romantic Lake fepin. Minnehaha, St. Anthony, Oko- boil, Minnetonka, Minnewakan, and the wild rapids of St. Croix and Wis consin flash back unnunbered gleams of borrowed crimson and purple and geld. The whole air is resonant with the slumberous melody of falling WA ters, and resplendent with the glories of a million shattered rainbows, as the last sunbeams of summer, tangled in the meshes of the spray and mist. die like ethereal dolphine in blaze of many-iinted pain.
 Nowhere else beneath the skies, not even in the Adirondacks or amid the western Carolina mountains, can more infinite variety and richness of color ing be found. Nature absolutely seems to empty all the paint-pots of heaven on the landscape. Earth dons her most gorgeous apparelling of myriad hued tapestry. Creation seems bathed ill prismatic splendors. The forests, rejoicing in their new outfit of cndlessly varied and bespan- gled toggery, toss their heads jauntily, swing their long arms, bend, scrape, and chuckle, and put on as many airs as dandies at rural ball. The red bud blushes at the wooing of jolly Jack Frost, who comes pinching her cheek and nipping her nose with the rolicking insolcnce of true devil may care. The willows and cotton woods, aspens and laurels, in their delicate draperies of green and gold, flutter and simpcr with coquettish delight at the whisperings of the amorous west breeze. The hickory, poplar, beech and ash, in their sweet but modest gowns ot stylish russet brown, look liFe fair young brides in their second day dresses. The pom pous oak, in his crimson coat, bows like grenadier to the slender maple in her wrappings of dainty canary :; and the majestic elm, like gilt brOid- cred courier, mods grandly to the tlame-yestured creeper that clings to his feet. The haw displays her scar let jewels, and the poison vine twines necklaces of blue black beads on fiery strands around the snowy birches. The everlasting green of the tall sentinel pines, and the feathery ferns, the sol cmn hemlocks, the ivies, and the tufted- cushioned mosses, lends re- lieving tinge to the grand chromatic dress parade.
 Amid it all and through it all, in silent grandeur, towards the south ward rolls the majestic Father of Waters, while toward the northward, ], toward the mystic borders of the auroa borealis and the northern pole, the far famed Red River of the north meanders, like rowing trnant among floods. Above bends sky of trans lucent azure, beauteous as ever bchcld itself reflected back in the blue waves of Naples or the Golden Horn. And over the whole entrancing landscape, sleeping in the mellow autumn sun light over hill and valley, mountain, lake and plain; over crag, rock, rivu- let and cascade, the mystic Indian summer spreads her soft veil of blue and lavender hazy crepe, woven from the smoke of thousands on thousands of miles of prairie fires.
 It is a realm of enchantment, a snatch from the land of the fairies. God himself could scarcely have made anything more beautiful. Let all real nature lovers and beauty-wor- shipers come hitherward after the fashionable tramps have fown-aftcr the catgut music and the dancing, the dressing, the vapid twaddle and fiirta- tion have vanished with the mosqui- toes and the summer gnats-while the autumn glory lasts, and young prairie chickens and antelope steaks are ripe. = Erchdnge.